


Lantern

by ChibiFrieza



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:23:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiFrieza/pseuds/ChibiFrieza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While investigating a series of drowning victims, Sam unexpectedly runs into Amelia again. As Sam and Dean work to uncover the cause of the drownings and lay a ghost to rest, Amelia becomes involved in the investigation; old wounds become relevant and old stories hold the key to solving the mystery.</p><p>Season 8 AU in which Don really is dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The beautiful chapter headers are by [amindaya](http://amindaya.livejournal.com/). 
> 
> The epigraphs are taken from the aria "The Black Swan" from the opera _The Medium_ by Gian Carlo Menotti.

_The sun has fallen and it lies in blood  
The moon is weaving bandages of gold_

He was a sailor before ever she met him, and would remain a sailor until the day he died, most like, and only a fool could love such a man, said her mother, but she was seventeen and he was beautiful.

He came to town a stranger one fair June day, one of the swell of sailors from the tall ship in the harbour, the Mary Florence, newly arrived with its cargo of coffee and sugar. Mariana, commissioned by her mother to visit the milliner, noticed him across the street. He was not so tall as his four companions, nor so broad; but his features were handsome and something about the way he carried himself drew her eyes. She decided that she liked his looks very much, and just as she had so decided, he laughed, and her heart pounded once like an anvil.

He chanced to glance her way and meet her gaze through the throng, and she looked away quickly. She had an errand, and it would not keep, for her mother was waiting.

On exiting the milliner's, she nearly ran into him.

"I beg your pardon," he said gravely, touching his cap politely. A smile lurked about the corners of his eyes.

"Not at all," she replied, collecting herself. "I ought to have paid better attention."

"I wouldn't object if you did," he said, and he said it so politely that it was a moment before she understood his meaning.

"Surely," she said, beginning to smile, "as we are strangers, I've already paid you more attention than I should."

"Then let me introduce myself, and we will be strangers no longer," he said, and removed his cap. "Daniel Farrier is my name."

"Mariana Bolton," she replied.

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Bolton," he said.

"Likewise," said Mariana. She looked about her. His companions from before were nowhere about. "Pray, Mr. Farrier, are you alone? Have your friends abandoned you?"

"On the contrary," he said, "my friends are just now showing the depth of their affection for me by leaving me alone to speak with you."

"Oh." A warm, pleased feeling woke in Mariana's breast. "Then our meeting was not an accident?"

"I confess it wasn't." Standing close to her, without comparison to his friends, he was not quite so short as he had seemed, but he was not much taller than Mariana herself, and she was not blessed with height. Even so, he stood as though he were a man six feet tall, stout as an oak, and his voice, while not deep, was pleasantly rough. His hair was an indifferent shade of brown, but his eyes were the colour of storm clouds over the water. "I wanted to inquire where you are going next, and whether I might accompany you."

"Oh!" Mariana said again. She was usually much quicker with her words, but Daniel -- Mr. Farrier, rather, it was too soon to be so familiar -- threw her off her natural balance, made her grasp for speech with less grace than she wished. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, then, for I am going home."

"Then may I see you home?" he asked, unhesitatingly. Mariana hesitated. "I promise you," he said quickly, "I have no designs on your virtue. I only want us to get to know one another." He smiled so winningly that she could not help but believe him.

"My mother lives outside the town," she said. It might be troublesome for him to accompany her the whole way, and in fact she was not sure what her mother might say about Mariana being escorted home by a strange man. On the other hand, once Mr. Farrier was known to Mariana's mother, he would be a stranger no longer.

The fact that he would likely sail out of port within the week was knowledge that Mariana ignored with a resolute heart.

"All the more reason you should have an escort, then," he said reasonably.

The day was warm, tempered by the salt breeze off the sea, and the walk was both interminable and too short, caught up as they were in conversation. Daniel Farrier was but nineteen, yet he had seen more of the world than Mariana had even dreamed of, and he spoke of Caribbean port towns and British quays with a casual worldliness that opened Mariana's eyes. Next to his sailor's breadth of experience she felt small and confined, her life following her mother as a seamstress seeming hopelessly pedestrian in comparison. But he asked her questions, listened avidly to her recounting of the dull intricacies of her daily life.

"I miss having a home that does not move," he said, wistfully, as they neared Mariana's lane. "I love the sea," he added hastily, "don't misunderstand me, and I couldn't leave it, I think, but I miss, sometimes, having something fixed to return to." He caught her eye, then, just as they reached the end of her lane, and she stopped, transfixed by his gaze, breathless.

"I- see," she said after a moment, regaining her wits. "Er, this is- my mother's house is at the end of this lane."

"Then I'll take my leave." He touched his cap again. "Will you be in town again soon?"

"Tomorrow, I think," she said. He smiled. Impulsively, she held out her hand. "Will I see you?"

He took her hand in his. His hands were calloused and scarred, but her hands were needle-pricked and toughened from thread and cloth. They went together, she thought. "Depend on it," he said. He kissed her hand, quickly, and with a wink he turned and began to walk back the way they had come.

It was too much to hope that the neighbours would not all have seen that Mariana had been out walking with one of the sailors. To forestall her mother hearing through gossip, she made up her mind as she walked up the lane that she would tell her right away.

As soon as she stepped inside, her mother called, "Did Mrs. Jackson agree?" Mariana's errand had been not one of purchase but of consultation; the Mayor's wife had ordered a gown from Mariana's mother and a hat from Mrs. Jackson, and desired that they should complement one another; Mariana had gone to convey the design of the gown, and suggest that both use the same colour of ribbon.

"Yes, mother."

As soon as Mariana spoke, her mother looked up from her work, keen eyes narrowing. "And what's put you up on that cloud, child?" she asked sharply.

Mariana had always been an honest girl, and she was not about to change her ways. "The ship has come in," she answered, "and I made acquaintance of one of the sailors, a Daniel Farrier."

"Of the Annapolis Farriers?" her mother asked.

"He didn't say. I don't know."

Her mother shook her head. "Annapolis or no, I won't have you breaking your heart over the likes of that, Mariana," she said firmly. "Nor endangering your virtue neither."

Mariana flushed. "He only walked me home," she exclaimed. "I wouldn't."

"Oh, walked you home, did he, the day you meet?" A raised eyebrow showed what her mother thought of that. "Not proper, it isn't, not by half. There'll be talk, my girl, and you'd best be prepared for it if you're going to keep company with sailors."

"Only the one," said Mariana defiantly, "and it's not anyone's business but mine, is it."

"And mine," reminded her mother. "Mind me, Mariana, a sailor's no fit suitor for a girl like you."

"Not likely to see a better, am I?" Mariana retorted.

"What about the Carver boy," her mother began, but Mariana shook her head.

"Mama, you know he wouldn't have me, even if I'd have him. I've never been May queen and I haven't any dowry -- no, Mama, don't, it isn't your fault," she said stubbornly. "It's all right. I'd rather have a husband I love and only see him once a year than a husband I despise that I can't be rid of."

"I ought to be shocked at you," said her mother dryly.

"But I'm your daughter," finished Mariana. "Now let me wash up and I'll help you trim the sleeves."

"Best get a start on the skirt hem," her mother amended. "I can see to the sleeves myself."

_____

_THEN_

 

The day is bright and windy, light and shadow confused by the clouds scudding across the sun, and Amelia has just about had it with getting whipped in the face by her own ponytail.

The box carrying, that's not a problem. There weren't that many to begin with, and it's only like five steps from her car to the motel room door, but apparently that's more than enough opportunity for the wind to play total havoc with anything not stringently tied down. It's a really good thing she's not a skirt person, actually. It's impressive that her t-shirt's stayed on.

Inside, after the last trip, Amelia drops onto the awful green couch and shuts her eyes. Just breathes the stillness of indoors.

Too still. She drags herself up and rifles through the grocery bags on the kitchenette counter. Forethought's one thing she was always good at.

Tequila. Limes. It's only four, but who cares? The whole point of moving to where-the-fuck-ever was to be able to day drink if she goddamn wants to. Not like it's hurting anyone but her.

~

 

Morning stabs her in the brain.

No, wait, that's the alarm on her phone, piercing straight through one ear and trailing glia out the other. She groans pathetically. The alarm, pitiless, takes no notice. With great effort, she untangles one arm from the worn sheets and gropes around the nightstand.

She finds the lamp first. The crash as it topples makes her yelp and recoil, clutching her head. Cautiously she cracks her eyes open, just awake enough to be worried about possible broken glass. The lamp's on the floor, though, and the nightstand seems clear, and the phone is still making noises from hell. She grabs for it again, clumsily, and makes it shut up.

Six-thirty in the morning, fucking _why_.

Because she planned ahead for her hangover like a responsible adult, that's why. And by the time she makes it in to her new job at 9, she feels a lot less like dying. Painkillers and a lukewarm shower, plus coffee, plus a lot of slow cautious moving until the Tylenol kicks in, mean that Amelia shows up at work looking like the professional they hired instead of an alcoholic undergrad on a Sunday.

The clinic is small, but so is Kermit. There are three other people in the office when she arrives: one receptionist, one veterinary assistant, and the incumbent vet, who's leaving tomorrow and is only here to make sure Amelia doesn't turn out to be some kind of axe murderer or obviously otherwise unfit for employment. Fortunately, the chasm of grief inside her is not readily apparent.

Dr. Teasdale introduces her to Roberta, the assistant, and Jordan, the receptionist, then gives her the rundown and kind of leaves her to it. It's a busy day, too, nothing major but a lot of routine checkups and shots, including a very wiggly boxer puppy who is determined not to let herself be vaccinated.

Jordan brings her coffee in the middle of the afternoon.

"You look like it's about that time," he says.

"Thanks."

She could have landed worse coworkers.

Once Dr. Teasdale is gone, Amelia starts feeling a bit more comfortable. It's a space she can own, now, instead of being a visitor. It's good work, satisfying even when it's the dull routine stuff, because she's helping. It's a good distraction from the rest of her life.

It's a good distraction from the motel room that she's still using a month down the road, then three months in, then six months in.

She just. She doesn't have the energy. All her energy goes into the clinic, into healing broken animals, into not thinking about anything. Sometimes she goes out drinking with Roberta and Jordan. Most times she drinks alone.

Then one night she's on call and a devastated Australian shepherd ends up on her table, hit by a car, internal bleeding and multiple leg fractures, and this is why she doesn't get drunk on weeknights anymore. It's bad, but not bad enough that the dog shouldn't live a long happy life, after.

She gets him stabilised and goes to find the guy who brought him in. Shit, he looks like she feels.

"With a little TLC he should pull through for you," she finds herself saying, professional mode fully engaged, and hates that her default attitude is still to reassure. This is the guy who caused that dog's injuries. Making him feel better is not her job.

Later in the week, when that same dog noses in through her open door and that same guy comes sheepishly to retrieve him, she starts to suspect that she might have been wrong in that assessment.

 

_____

_NOW_

The air rushing in through the open windows of the Impala smells like salt before they get anywhere near seeing the ocean. Basically all of Maine smells like salt. This is one reason Dean insists he hates New England, because you have all the drawbacks of ocean proximity and none of the benefits of more southerly beaches. Sam is pretty sure Dean keeps insisting on this because he doesn't want to admit that he actually values things other than sex and food. It's been an open secret for a while now, though, and Dean can't stop glancing at the rear view as they roll into town. The sunset is a bloody wreck behind them, and there's a golden moonrise ahead. Appreciate the little things, isn't that what they say? Dean's still missing Purgatory, Sam can tell, but things like this seem to give him a little more slack, make it so he's not wound quite so tightly. His breathing deepens a fraction every time he looks in the rear view.

They roll up to a quaintly trashy motel, and this is the kind of thing that still jars Sam, how normal it feels to be back here, and yet how different everything is. He's always hated being at odds with Dean, and this new weirdness, the recalibration they've been doing to get back in tune with each other, has been difficult.

Sam sets up on the table right away, laptop and notes, double-checking all their facts and connections. People are definitely drowning, the circumstances are definitely mysterious, and the victims are all definitely dark-haired women. Aside from that, there's a scattering of half-connected facts and a handful of local ghost stories that look like they might be relevant.

"So," says Dean, plopping down on the chair across from Sam. "What do you think, wait until morning to get intel on the ghost lore, or do us some firsthand recon tonight? There's that shore walker, or the guy who supposedly haunts the old general store, or, ooh, how about those twins who killed each other, they're supposed to be tethered to the Salvation Army downtown."

Sam can't help smiling. Dean's just so eager. It is, he will admit, kind of nice to have what looks like a regular old-fashioned ghost hunt on their hands, after the way things have gone to shit the last few years.

"Think we should split up?" He glances at his notes. "If we don't get too close, we could stake out the twins and the general store at the same time. They're not too far from each other. Then if nothing turns up we move on."

"I dibs the twins," Dean says instantly.

"You would," Sam says, amused. It's not like the alleged ghost twins are even sisters. Probably Dean just thinks Sam wouldn't be able to handle a pair of ghosts if the shit hit the fan, and while it still prickles that Dean is so eternally the big brother, so consistently refuses to believe that Sam can handle himself, it's an unfortunate truth that the last few years have not been Sam's finest. He can let a few obvious workload tweaks slide.

There's a quiet rational part of Sam that whispers that Dean is probably right about the twin situation anyway. Sam doesn't listen to it.

Dean drops Sam off near the general store and he breaks quietly into the back. October's too cold for an outdoor stakeout, and a violent but accidental death isn't too likely to have anything really nasty up its sleeve, so Sam pours himself a salt barrier and settles in to wait.

They check in every half hour.

"Anything from Frick and Frack?"

"Not a peep." There's a rustling, like Dean's getting comfortable. "But it's still early."

Three hours later, Dean sounds a lot less sanguine.

"What do I gotta do to get a ghost to show up, huh?" he snaps. Sam tries not to laugh at him.

The next check-in finds Dean sounding glum.

"I don't think it's these guys. They're too busy trying to off each other, there's no way they're going after anybody else."

The ones that don't even know they're dead get to Sam the most.

No one shows up at the general store before dawn, but there do seem to be rats in the cellar and doves in the eaves, so Sam figures the weeping ghost-prisoner rumours are accounted for. No EMF, no cold spots, nothing like that.

When the sun breaks the horizon, Sam calls Dean again.

"Nothing."

"Me neither. Be right there."

They go back to the motel and sleep until noon.

In the afternoon, they look up the address of the curator of the local heritage museum, one Professor Meredith Jeremy, and Sam pastes on his earnest face.

"So sorry to bother you, ma'am, but we're amateur historians and we've been looking into the local culture of ghost legends. We were hoping you might be able to fill in some blanks for us, or maybe direct us to someone who could?"

She's tall and broad, nearly as tall as Dean, blond hair fading to grey and cropped short.

"Well, that's not really my area of interest, but you could try talking to my husband. Cal!" she calls, turning back into the house. "Come on in," she says, waving them inside.

Cal turns out to be a large man, of a height with his wife but much heavier, bald and bespectacled with a perpetually thoughtful expression.

"Well, I don't know that I'd call myself any kind of expert," he cautions, "but I have heard of the ones you mention. Some are more grounded in the history of the town than others."

"How do you mean?" Dean asks.

"I mean that- well, for instance, take the ghost of Simon Brown." Sam exchanges a glance with Dean. That's the one said to haunt the general store. "The story goes that he died in on the job the 1820s, but if you look at the history of this area, the general store wasn't even there at that point. Not to mention that I have a decent idea where the story came from in the first place."

"Oh?" Dean's eyebrows shoot up.

"I have some very interesting cousins," says Cal. "And I'm going to leave it at that."

"Uh-huh. Right. So which ghost legends are actually rooted in, uh, historical accuracy, then?" Sam asks. "Or are most of them recent fabrications?"

"Oh, no, no," Cal reassured him, "all the rest came about naturally. Or as naturally as a ghost story can, I suppose." He laughs. No one else does. "Tell you my favourite one, actually," he says, suddenly serious. "About two hundred-odd years ago, a woman married a sailor, and they say he never came home. She couldn't live without him, the story goes, so she killed herself, and now she haunts the beaches."

"And this is your favourite?" Sam can feel the skepticism on his face.

"Only because there are so many versions," Cal explains. "I've actually made a compilation, do you want to see?"


	2. Chapter 2

_Torn and tattered is my bridal gown  
And my lamp is lost_

 

The ship having arrived, Mariana and her mother both returned to town the next day to make purchases. Outside the cloth seller's Mariana caught sight of Daniel Farrier coming out of the public house down the street, once again in the company of his friends.

"Mama," she said, "that's he, will you meet him?"

Mariana's mother was smaller than she, but stouter-hearted, and she took only a glance over before saying, "Come, then."

It must make a funny picture, Mariana thought, her small mother and her small self approaching five big men. It was broad daylight and the middle of town, and she had spent almost an hour in the company of one of those men yesterday, so she was not frightened, but she wondered if she ought to be. She wondered, suddenly, what his friends would think of her. The streets were always full of crude comments when ships came in and sailors came to shore and filled their eyes with women again; if Farrier's friends were those sort of men, she must respect him less.

"Good day, sailors," said Mariana's mother. The group of sailors touched their caps and grinned down at her. Mariana stepped up behind her mother's shoulder. "Which of you is Daniel Farrier?"

"That's me, ma'am," said he, stepping forward. He took off his cap and inclined his head. "May I take then that you're Mrs. Bolton?"

"You may, and you may also take my eternal ill will if you cause harm to my girl."

"Mother!" Mariana pulled at her sleeve, chagrined. But Farrier with a sober face said,

"I will suffer that gladly if I should ever cause her harm."

Mariana felt her cheeks warm. Farrier's friends were elbowing each other and grinning again, and Mariana didn't know what to think.

"Well then," she said, straining for lightness, "now you have met one another, we must be about our business."

"There's a dance tomorrow," said Farrier quickly. "Will you be there?"

"Yes," said Mariana, glancing at her mother, who stayed quiet.

"Then I'll see you there," he said. "Good day to you both. Mrs. Bolton, a pleasure."

Alone with her mother again on the busy street, Mariana said, "Well?" somewhat desperately.

Her mother sighed. "I like him," she admitted. "But, Mariana. Be careful."

"Of course," said Mariana automatically.

_____

_THEN_

 

The day her life shatters for the second time, she is gardening.

The serviceman comes to find her in the back yard when she doesn't answer the door. Deadheading geraniums, hands and knees covered with dirt, wearing the stupid pink floppy hat that Don got her as a joke four years ago, she turns around when he calls her name and her stomach drops out when she sees the uniform.

Along with the sick dread, the horrible certainty, comes a vicious spike of vindication that pulses through her whole body before she can shut it off. She _knew_. She _knew_ this would happen, she knew when he enlisted, and he went anyway.

The days following the notification are a blur, details and neighbours and please, God, just get me through five more minutes of this. The funeral is mostly vague too, details standing out in later memory like bare trees against a overcast sky. The firearm salute. The flag. The weeping of people who barely knew him. Her own dry face, eyes burning and aching, system too stressed to produce tears. The shapes of the clouds when she looks away from the first shovelful.

Every person who offers condolences wears the same facial expression. Pity, underscored with worry. There is a layer of removal between her and every person who speaks to her, a hastily constructed wall meant to keep her pieces inside until they can heal again. It all feels so familiar.

It's not that she isn't grateful for the casseroles and the concern (except for how she... isn't, really). It's just that the weight of her neighbours' sympathy is stifling. The deeply worried looks she's not supposed to catch from her coworkers weigh on her shoulders. The way her father hugs her so gently and lets her sleep until noon while he cleans her house wears a hole right through her weak places.

She kicks her dad out after a week.

"I'll be okay," she says. It's the worst lie she's ever told.

He doesn't ask if she's sure. She would thank him for that if her throat would let any more words out.

She tries to go back to work after that, but apparently her practice has two weeks' mandatory bereavement leave. Which is stupid, because right now there is nothing she wants more than to set a bone or suture something or hand-nurse a kitten that can't suckle. There is nothing she wants more than to get outside herself, go where she can ignore the holes and the weight and every frayed edge.

A lot of gardening gets done, that second week.

Rosa, the left-hand neighbour, takes to working outside when Amelia does. She never tries to talk, but keeps shooting concerned looks over the fence, and Amelia would take inane chatter over worried eyes any day of the week. One day she tries; asks Rosa what fertilizer she uses on her hydrangeas. Rosa gives her such a look, a _you poor, bereaved dear, I understand why you're asking_ look, and she answers, but it's useless, because it was supposed to be a distraction and it isn't, it never is, it can never be when everyone around Amelia treats her like one wrong word will destroy her all over again.

She isn't made of fucking porcelain. So maybe it does feel like she's only breathing with one lung, or like something inside has snapped and left part of her untethered, or like her hands aren't hers and her feet don't belong to her legs and her head isn't quite connected to the rest of her sometimes. That doesn't mean everyone has to go around looking at her like a goddamn tragedy.

The best part is when she goes back to work and they've left her off the schedule for the next month.

"I told you, I _want_ to come back," she says, yet again. She's not doing a very good job at keeping her anger reined in. It's leaking out all those places where she's worn through.

"I just think," says Dr. Klein, "that you need some more time to heal before coming back. This is an emotionally taxing job-"

"Which is exactly what I _need_ right now," she insists. "You don't understand, this is exactly why-"

"Amelia," he interrupts, and she almost snaps. "Just listen. Please." His voice is probably meant to be compassionate, but she just feels patronised as fuck. "You've gone through so much. We all admire the way you're bearing up under it all. We admire your fortitude. _I_ ," he amends, "admire your fortitude. But I'm not sure you're ready to come back to work. Look at you right now, you're still so emotional. I can see you shaking from here." He shakes his head. "I can't have that kind of unpredictability in my surgery. We don't know how you'll react to distressed animals."

 _I DO_ , she wants to scream at him. She's not shaking from any emotion that he'd acknowledge from her right now. Rage, maybe. This feels a lot like rage.

She walks out.

As soon as she gets home, she starts a job search. There must be an animal hospital somewhere else in Texas that needs a veterinarian. Somewhere that's not suburban Dallas. Somewhere that's as far from suburban Dallas as it gets.

She doesn't tell anyone until after the interview, not even Lucy, who's been her friend since long before vet school. When she's offered the job, she takes Lucy to lunch.

"I'm leaving," she says over soup.

Lucy is understandably upset. "So help me God, if you shut me out again."

Amelia looks down at her bowl. "I don't know what kinds of promises I can make right now. I can't breathe here." Lucy looks hurt. "Not you," Amelia starts, but Lucy cuts her off.

"No, stop, ignore me. I know you didn't mean it that way. I just." She takes a deep breath. "I just wish I could help. I know I can't, I know if there was something I could do you'd let me know, I know that." She makes a helpless gesture with her spoon. "Can you start answering my texts? You don't have to call or anything. Just text me back once in a while so I know you're still-" she pauses, her flinch almost imperceptible. "-so I know you're there."

Amelia nods slowly. "I think I can do that."

She gives her notice after lunch. Says it to Klein's condescending shocked face and walks out and it's the best she's felt in weeks.

_need help with anything before you go?_

_Actually I could use a hand going through stuff._

Lucy helps her sort, takes care of getting rid of shit and renting storage space to keep the painful things that Amelia can't make herself throw away. Amelia gives the key to her dad.

There's not much left to take by the time she's ready to leave.

_____

_NOW_

There are twenty-seven distinct versions of the tale of the Lantern Woman. Cal has compiled them in a small d-ring notebook, each page containing a different re-telling, the edges colour-coded in a spectrum gradient from red through blue.

"So they're in some kind of particular order, then?" Sam asked when he noticed, before they left the Jeremys' house.

"More or less, but it's a pretty vague set of criteria that I'm comparing." Cal shrugged. "Mostly it just makes sense inside my head to sequence them this way. However you use it, just make sure they end up back in order."

Sam had no problem making that promise. Dean won't help him when the time comes, and they're spread out all over the table right now, but it doesn't really matter. Reading through, he thinks he can see what Cal was after when he put these tales in the order he did.

The basic story is: there is a young woman (seamstress, miller's daughter, farm girl) who meets a young man (sailor, fisherman, pirate) and falls in love with him (instantly, over the course of several visits, from childhood). They (get married, become engaged, have sexual relations) and the man has to leave again. The man (drowns at sea, is lost with his ship, runs away with another woman).The woman (pines, becomes ill, goes insane) and becomes obsessed with his safe return, so she walks the beaches with a lantern and eventually (throws herself in the sea, falls in the sea accidentally, is pushed in by a rival).

Some elements remain consistent throughout several or most of the versions; others change nearly every time. Cal's ordering reflects those shifts in meticulous detail.

The constant is the way she supposedly manifests: a short woman in a white dress, walking the coast with a lantern. She never moans or weeps, but only walks silently and eventually flickers out like a blown lamp.

"So what are we thinking," Dean says, "Woman in White?"

Sam frowns. "Maybe," he says slowly.

Dean nods. "I know, it feels a little off, doesn't it. But we should definitely check this one out. Best documentation of a haunting I've ever seen."

"I'll say." Sam continues leafing through the pages slowly. "I mean, I suppose she could be the one drowning all of them. But if she only manifests on the shore..."

"Could be an effect transference through the water supply. We've seen that before," Dean reminds him.

"True." Sam shuffles all the pages back together. He'll sort them later. "Okay, so we're heading down to the shore tonight, right?"

"Right. Let's see what this spirit's made of."

The sightings are apparently localised within about a hundred yards, which is helpful but only so helpful. Also, while it's still a pretty deserted stretch of beach and tumbled rocky cliffs, there's really no way of knowing if she'll manifest tonight at all.

They stake it out anyway, parking so they can overlook most of the relevant area from the car as the sun sets, torn clouds stained crimson again.

"Sailor's delight," Sam says under his breath. The ocean alternates crystalline and almost black under the mauve sky, pricked with the first stars.

It's a long night. They sleep in shifts, switching off every two hours, and it's excruciatingly boring. Of all the things he never thought to be grateful he didn't have to go through the year Dean was in Purgatory, it's never occurred to him to include this. He should have. It's not likely to get him killed, but he'd infinitely rather a straight-up fight than this immobility. It's just hard enough to stay focused that it's a nuisance, but not a strong enough antagonist that he can really throw any kind of real effort behind it. He just has to keep focusing. Something he's always been very good at, yes, but. He's never liked this.

It's another fruitless night. Nobody at all shows up.

At dawn, Dean prods him awake.

"Nobody here but us chickens, little brother." He sounds disgruntled, like the ghost done him wrong by not showing up to kill anyone.

They've slept enough, so they stop for coffee on the way back to the motel. Time to explore other avenues, get some more irons on the fire. They have a tendency to blinker, get hung up on the first likely possibility that presents itself, but they've learned, over the years, that not looking at all the angles can get you killed.

He's turning over other possibilities in his head, like maybe there's some kind of creature here that's not leaving traces, or maybe it's another ghost that they haven't looked into yet, and when he turns to leave the shitty coffee shop with two large cups in his hands, he bumps into somebody sideways. He's apologising before he registers the person standing stock still, staring at him.

"Amelia." His brain is stuck. She's not supposed to be here. He left her in Texas (he left her) and she's supposed to still be there, working, she's not supposed to be in Maine.

"Sam." She looks as blankly surprised as he feels.

"What are you doing here?" he blurts.

"I. It's a long story. Actually it's not, I inherited a house."

"You. Inherited- I'm sorry for your loss?" he tries.

She shakes off his concern. "Great-aunt. I didn't know her well. I don't know why-" She stops. "Anyway. I guess Dean is around somewhere?" She's keeping her face blank. Sam has a pretty good guess what she's hiding.

"Yeah, he's waiting in the car. I don't suppose you. Well." No, probably Amelia doesn't want to meet the presumed-dead brother that Sam left her for. And, wow, even in his head it sounds so sketchy that he can't even blame her. They didn't end well. This wouldn't end well.

But Dean opens the door just then and says, "Gettin' old, here, Sammy, the hell is taking so long?" before he sees that Sam is talking to someone and pulls up short. "Hel-lo, who's this?" He meets Sam's eyes. Sam can only guess what his own face is doing, but Dean's eyebrow goes up. "So I'm guessing you two know each other?" and Sam can't do this, this is not a situation he can deal with right now.

Amelia turns around. "You're guessing right," she says brusquely, in her _nobody better try to feed me any shit right now_ voice. "And I'm guessing you're the not-so-dead brother, right? Dean?"

The change in Dean's face would be hilarious if Sam were in any frame of mind to appreciate it. "Wow. Okay. Yeah. So I guess that means you're Amelia, then."

Amelia shoots Sam a glance, and he could swear he can _hear_ her saying _damn straight you better have told him about me_.

"Yeah. I am." Her tone, shit. Sam has to get them out of here before there's blood. "I hope you appreciate how much your brother loves you."

Before Dean can verbalise the _what's that supposed to mean?_ that Sam can clearly read on his face, Amelia turns away and joins the line.

"See you around, Sam. Or not, I guess." They lock eyes for a second, and there is absolutely nothing that Sam can say to make this better right now.

"Yeah," he says weakly, and leaves the coffee shop, Dean trailing behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

 

_With silver needles and with silver thread  
The stars stitch a shroud for the dying sun_

 

Carefully falling in love was not something that was possible, it seemed. Every spare thought was of Daniel, every wandering away from the task at hand was in his direction, and she saw his eyes before her as she stitched.

The dance was not the only festivity that week. Because the ship was in, there were parties of all kinds, another dance, an outdoor gathering in the city square. With her mother's cautious blessing, Mariana went to all of them. The Mayor's wife's dress was the last of their commissions that was very pressing, and Mariana worked hard during the days so that she might see Daniel -- for so she called him now, as he called her by her given name -- in the evenings.

The sailors were in port for only nine days. The night before they were to leave, Mariana and Daniel met in the square, where there was a bonfire and music.

"I leave tomorrow," Daniel said presently, as they stood together looking at the fire. There was noise all around them, the music, the crackling of the fire as it shot sparks up to join the stars in the night sky.

Mariana kept silent. She wanted him to stay, but he could hardly do so, and she was no fool. But she did not want him to leave and never see him again, as though this week had never happened, as though they were nothing to one another. It had only been a week, but he was not nothing to her. He was, in fact, frighteningly much to her already.

She didn't know what she was to him, so she kept silent.

"I," said Daniel, and he turned toward her and took her hand. "Mariana," he said, more quietly. "Will you walk with me?"

She nodded, still not speaking, and they made their way through the crowd away from the fire, off into a side street where the firelight scarcely reached.

"Mariana, I'll speak plainly, for I think we can be quite honest with one another," he began, then stopped.

"Speak, then," she said, tugging on his hand. He smiled at her, and the warmth in his eyes made her shiver.

"I love you," he said. It was a shock, but not a shock at the same time. "I think I've shown it, but I want to be clear. We've not known each other long, but you're just the kind of girl I always hoped I'd meet. You're clever and kind and you know what it is to work with your hands, and if you don't love me I'll try to understand, but-"

"I do," she interrupted. "I do love you." She was breathless, a little overwhelmed, although she had hoped.

"It's not fair to ask you to wait for me, though," he said then, "for I can't give up the sea-"

"I know you can't. You needn't ask it of me. I'll offer it freely." She brought his hand up, boldly, and kissed it. "I'll wait for you. I'd rather wait for you than be with anyone else."

His face was open and surprised, a look she hadn't yet seen on him. "Mariana," he breathed. He drew near, as though he couldn't help it, and she lifted her face, and he kissed her.

Then he was pulling away and reaching into his pocket and saying, "Will you really wait, then? I'll have enough money after the next voyage, we'll be back in six months and I'll marry you if you'll wait, will you marry me?" Mariana nodded, could not speak, and he dropped to his knees and slid a ring onto her finger. She pulled him up again, immediately, and pushed up on her toes and kissed him, wrapped her arms around his neck as he put his hands on her waist, and dimly in the back of her mind she heard her mother's cautioning, but she was going to marry this man, surely she need not heed those cautions now.

"Mariana," he said, "sweet, lovely Mariana, I'll be gone tomorrow." He laid his face against her neck, pressed kisses there, making her gasp. "Will you come with me now?"

She hesitated.

"Come with me," he whispered, moving his hand along her body, and she shuddered.

"Yes," she said. "Where?"

Everyone else was still in the square; no one saw them enter his lodgings, nor heard them as they found a new joy in one another, nor saw them leave again before Daniel walked her home and kissed her in the lane as though he would die without her.

"Six months," he said, his forehead pressed to hers, "and I will come back and marry you."

"I'll be here," she said.

_____

_THEN_

The worst part is obviously the loss. The loss is indescribable, unimaginable, she was in no way prepared for it and it hurts so much she doesn't even understand it. Everything she touches is broken.

But the next worst part, the pain she can actually comprehend, is the betrayal of it. All that work, all that preparation, all that hope, and then the intense labour of the aftermath when the hope was all gone. The worst was that all their work - all _her_ work - was for nothing. Blood and tears and viscera and that was it.

He wasn't even there. He's not even there. She hasn't told him yet.

They don't get to communicate very often. Satellite reception is spotty, never mind cell phones. They've Skyped once or twice, but the connection never lasts long. All the same, it's so good to see his face while she hears his voice, see how his eyes change just that tiny bit when he says "I love you" even with the shitty frame rate and low resolution, watch his mouth shape her name and his hands and his shoulders and his _face_. Phone conversations are all right, she still has the tone of his voice, but she's never been big on emailing, and keeping in touch with a _husband_ in the _military_ when he's _deployed_ is really taxing her capacity.

And this isn't the kind of thing you say in an email.

She's out on medical leave for a week, and when she comes back, everyone greets her with kind eyes that she acknowledges as briefly as she can before getting down to it. Really, she's fine, she just needs to get back to work. Those cats aren't going to spay themselves. If there's a fine irony in her first task back, she doesn't need to make a meal out of it. Everything tastes bitter anyway.

Lucy was the one who took her to the hospital, and she knows Amelia well enough to know when to push and when to stay out of her way. She pushed a lot the first couple of days. Amelia hated it. She's grateful now, but she hated it. Coddling herself isn't in her repertoire of common activities and it never will be if she can help it.

The third day after Amelia's gone back to work, she gets an email from Don.

_Hey babe,_

_still hotter than hell here. Still miss you like a limb. Hopefully my luck holds out and that phrase won't come back to bite me in the ass anytime soon._

_We've got an important thing coming up tomorrow. Just wanted you to know. Tell the kid Daddy says hi._

_I love you so much.  
Don_

Lucy comes to pick her up for dinner and finds her with her head down on the kitchen table next to a half-empty bottle of tequila.

"Oh, god, I should have known," she says despairingly, hauling Amelia up out of her chair and into a hug. Amelia pushes at her for a moment before succumbing to the inevitable and shoving her face into Lucy's collar, grabbing clumsily at the back of her shirt. If Lucy's going to be such an irritatingly good friend, the least Amelia can do is go all out crying on her shoulder.

Lucy lets Amelia sag and cry and then when it's done, she says, "Okay, I'm putting you to bed and then I'm cooking myself dinner in your kitchen. You can have some once you sleep this off."

Amelia doesn't answer. Lucy predictably takes that as a yes and drags her upstairs, gets her water, makes sure her shoes are off and gets her under the covers. She's not quite drunk enough to actually pass out, but she's still in the leggings she changed into when she got home and she's not wearing a bra anymore, so there's no discomfort besides her spinning nausea to prevent her from falling right over the edge into unconsciousness.

Five months of not drinking really put a dent in her tolerance.

She wakes up again in the dark. Her clock, when she can focus on reading it, says 2:07. For a second or two she can't remember why she's awake at this hour, why the hell her head is pounding, and then it all comes flooding back in and she drops back down onto the pillow in a rush of dizzy recollection. The email. The shock of pain from poking at the raw wound. The dread of telling Don what she needs to tell him.

Lucy. Is probably down sleeping on the couch, because Lucy is too good to Amelia and wouldn't leave her alone.

She drinks the water from the glass on her nightstand and goes down to the den. Sure enough, there's Lucy, bundled up under three afghans with a throw pillow under her head. The room is dark and quiet, with the display on the DVD player and the light from the streetlamp, muted through the blue curtains, the only sources of illumination. There's a vague food scent in the air, so instead of waking Lucy, Amelia goes in search of dinner.

Apparently dinner is chicken stir fry. She reheats it in a pan on the stove, because the microwave will beep and she doesn't like using it anyway, but by the time she's done and sitting down to eat, Lucy's woken up anyway.

"Hey," she says quietly, leaning in the kitchen doorway in sock feet with an afghan around her shoulders and another one trailing behind her. Amelia nods toward the chair opposite her and Lucy comes and takes it. It's dim in the kitchen, just the stove light on low illuminating half of Lucy's face.

"You know I have to ask," she says, still quietly.

Amelia nods. She feels like shit and she's too tired to fight.

"Email from Don," she says, hoping that'll cover the situation well enough that she won't have to explain further. Please, please let her not have to explain further, she is not going to cry twice in one day. It's just not going to happen.

Apparently it's sufficient. "Oh, shit," says Lucy, her eyes opening slightly. "'Melia, shit, I'm sorry. That's not- I didn't think of that."

"I did. Still wasn't ready for it." Amelia takes a bite, chews tiredly. Considers her next words carefully. Swallows. "How do I-" She can't even ask the question. This is going to be a disaster.

"Not email," says Lucy immediately. "You can't." Amelia nods. She figured. "Phone or waiting for Skype is up to you, I guess," she continues slowly. "I mean, depends how long you think you can leave it, maybe."

"Sooner is better," Amelia murmurs, mouth full. She swallows. "He'll probably call as soon as he can, maybe later this week. There's apparently action happening tomorrow. Which actually is now, there." Shit. She's only equipped to deal with so much at once. The old worry, only ever partially buried, claws its way up her chest. She clamps down around the urge to vomit.

Lucy sits quietly while Amelia gets a handle on herself.

"I can go," she says, once Amelia has begun eating again.

"Up to you."

Lucy rolls her eyes. "You know better than that." She gets up and pulls the afghan tighter around her, rescues the one on the floor. "See you in the morning, bright eyes."

_____

_NOW_

" _Damn_ , Sammy," Dean says when they're back in the motel room. The drive was awkwardly silent, but fortunately short.

"Just say what you're gonna say, Dean." The adrenaline ebb following on the heels of his second stakeout night has taken the fight out of him. He just wants Dean to get this over with, whatever it's going to be.

"Well, I'm just sayin', girl's a pistol."

"Woman." It's automatic and irritated. "She's a woman, Dean, would you call her a boy if she were male?"

"I think if she were male we'd be having a whole different conversation, Sammy," says Dean, eyebrows up near the ceiling somewhere.

"What conversation are we having, Dean?" Sam slumps down onto his bed. "What do you want to say? That I shouldn't have quit hunting no matter how hot she is? That I'm not allowed to take time to heal even if she basically kept me from killing myself? Because that's what I hear every time we talk about last year."

Dean sits down like his legs have collapsed.

"Now hang on just a second," he says hotly.

"Is that not how you feel, Dean? Are you going to try to tell me that you don't resent me for not coming after you? Because I kind of thought I could honour a promise to my big brother and not totally fall apart at the seams, in one fell swoop, there. Whoops, my mistake." And apparently Sam is still always spoiling for a fight, somewhere inside, somehow, at all times. How foolish to think that part of him was gone. There's probably significance to the fact that it's only come back out since Dean's return, but that's not an idea he cares to even look at right now.

"Damn it, Sammy, shut up and let me answer." Dean stands up again and starts pacing. "I've been trying to understand where your head's been at, but man, when have I ever been able to figure you out? I know you better than anyone and I still don't get you at all sometimes. I don't _get it_ , okay, Sam? I don't get it, and maybe I've got a few issues of my own from Purgatory. That's on me, and I'm sorry I ever put it on you. But you gotta give me time, Sammy. I'm still not totally out of Purgatory."

Sam sits quietly for a moment, a bit stunned. "Oh," he says. It doesn't make things okay, but it's something. It's an attempt. "We're going to have to talk about this eventually, I think," he says. Dean waves him off, already clamming back up.

"Yeah, yeah. Now what are we doing today?"

The answer, as usual, is research. Dean starts with water creatures and Sam pokes into some of the lesser-known ghosts and local weird stories.

He collects a few sketchy possibilities, but this really doesn't look like a promising avenue of investigation. Nothing has anything to do with water or any indication of an affinity for women, let alone dark-haired ones.

Hopefully Dean's come up with something useful.

As it turns out, Dean has not come up with anything useful.

"Dude, I got way too much and absolutely nothing. I hate it when that happens."

Sam shrugs. They grab dinner and head off to stake out the beach again.

It's close to midnight when Sam sees a light.

"Dean." Sam gives him an abrupt shake. " _Dean_."

Dean snuffles awake instantly. "Where?"

"Down to the right, see?"

There's a faint meandering light illuminating a pale figure, making its faint way up a rocky slope. The light flickers, jerks, resumes its climb.

Sam gets out of the car. Dean gets out on the other side. As quietly as they can, salt guns held carefully, they creep toward the bluff the ghost is scaling. She reappears briefly at the top, just at the edge, and then a strong wind blows suddenly, blinding Sam with his own hair and the collar of his jacket, and when he gets his eyes back where she was, she's gone.

"Damn it," Dean says, vicious but near-inaudible. "I think she's gone."

They creep forward and look around more thoroughly, but it looks like she's disappeared for the night.

"Crap." Dean slumps. "I didn't get a good look at her, did you?"

Sam shakes his head. "Not really. She had her hair up, I think? And she was, uh, big."

"Big." Dean's eyebrows prompt elaboration.

"You know." Sam gestures around his middle. "Like, she looked like the climb was a little awkward."

Dean nods thoughtfully. "Okay, so girlfriend couldn't lay off whatever they had instead of Twinkies back in the day. Sounds like a real catch."

" _Dean_ ," Sam hisses. It's reflexive shit-talking, he knows Dean doesn't actually treat fat girls with any less respect than skinny girls, but really.

Dean just shrugs. He opens his mouth, but whatever he was going to say is cut off by a noise. He frowns.

"You hear that?"

"Yeah," Sam says grimly. "It sounded a hell of a lot like a splash."

They take off running in what seems like the appropriate general direction and Dean flicks on his flashlight, scanning the shoreline. There's nothing, but the splashing continues, and - yes, Sam wasn't wrong - there's a voice, weak and intermittent, but distinct.

"Dean, I think it's over this way," he says, fumbling out his own flashlight and heading inland.

The houses hereabouts aren't very close together, big open yards that back onto the shore, and Sam's light reflects off of windows and gate latches and then, oh, there, the nearest house has a swimming pool in the backyard.

Sam registers that it's October and the pool is still full before he sees a woman covered in her own long hair, choking and sputtering on it where it covers her face, clinging to the deep end ladder with what looks like all her strength. She keeps losing her grip and getting it back, two or three times in the space of the couple of seconds between Sam spotting her and reaching the edge of the pool. He hears Dean coming up behind him as he skids to his knees and grabs at her. She clutches at his arms immediately, but when he starts to pull, she gasps in pain.

"Ankle," she bites out, and.

It's Amelia.

Sam nearly lets go out of sheer surprise. He doesn't, though, and Dean leans over and directs his flashlight into the pool. As soon as the light hits the water, Sam feels the resistance slacken, and hauls Amelia up and out of the pool. She's fully clothed and shivering in the cold night air.

"Did you see it?" Sam demands.

"See _what?_ " Amelia asks incredulously.

"No, I was asking-" Sam turns to look at Dean. "Dean?"

"Just a shadow, for like a second." Dean shakes his head. "I knew it."

"You knew what?" Amelia turns furious eyes on Dean. "What the hell is going on?"

Sam looks at Dean, meeting his eyes. They're going to have to tell her.

Poetic justice, is what it is.


	4. Chapter 4

_I had given him a kiss of fire  
And a golden ring_

 

He came to the cottage before dawn when the world was grey, before the tide turned. Mariana was awake and met him at the door.

"I can't linger," he said, and she quieted him with a kiss.

"I know. Here," she said, and took his hand, and slid onto his finger the gold ring that her mother had given her father. "I know you can't wear it shipboard," she said hastily, "I know you'll be working too much with your hands, but keep it with you?"

He closed his hand tightly, looking at the line of gold against the tan of his skin, dull in the dim light, but beautiful to her. For her.

"I'll keep it as safe as ever I can," he promised. He looked past her then, out over the fields and dunes to the ocean, as though he could see even from so far inland that the tide was turning. "I must go," he said, his voice betraying his reluctance.

"Go, then," she said, "and I'll see you when you return."

He kissed her again, longingly, until she had to push him away.

"They'll leave without you," she said urgently, half-laughing to shield herself from the pain of his going.

"Let them," he said, but he let her go and stepped away. "I love you, Mariana."

"I love you, Daniel," she replied. And he smiled his sweetest smile and turned away quickly. She watched him go, then stood in the doorway to watch the sun rise.

Her mother found her there not long after the sun came up.

"Tell me you've not been up all night, child," she said wearily.

Mariana turned and held out her left hand. Her mother took it and sighed.

"I'll be happy for you on the day, my girl, but you've a deal of waiting ahead of you."

It was disappointing that her mother was not happier, but Mariana was used to being disappointed.

"I know that, Mama. You'll help with my dress still?"

"Of course." She pulled Mariana into an embrace. "Of course I will.

_____

_THEN_

The first time Don comes home on leave, Amelia is torn between wanting to punish him for being gone and wanting to wrap herself around him and never let him leave again. It shocks her. She knew she was angry, but this is a much more primitive response than she ever realised she was capable of.

She settles for as much sex as they can manage and barely letting him out of her sight the rest of the time. He doesn't seem to want to let her get far out of his sight, either, so it basically works out.

They're lying tangled up in each other and the sheets and breathing each other's air the night before he goes back and she doesn't want to ruin the moment but she can't shut herself up.

"Do you have to?"

He sighs. "Yeah, babe, I do. I know you hate it-" She turns her face a little away, huffs out a small bitter laugh. "And honestly, I do too most days," he goes on, using that voice he uses when he needs someone to understand. She heard that voice too much before he left for training. Somehow she's missed it. "But it's important. It needs to get done."

"'If decent peaceable guys don't sign up, this war's never going to end,'" she quotes him back to himself. She knows all his talking points by rote. She understands. She asked anyway, but she gets it. On a visceral level, she completely comprehends his willingness to sacrifice so much and risk everything just because somebody has to. They're trying to fix things, over there. She gets that.

It's just hard.

When he leaves again, it's almost worse than it was in the beginning, because now she's had him back, and she knows exactly how hard it is to deal with not having him around.

He gets another brief leave right before his platoon is deployed. She clings to him this time, completely unashamed, just about ready to try anything to keep him from leaving, from going over, from taking those risks.

But that's not fair to his team. They're family, too, now. And as much as she hates to admit it, they need him more than she does right now. There's not really much of a chance she'll die because of his absence. That's more than they can say.

Amelia is pretty good at compartmentalising. You have to be, to work in a medical profession. You have to be able to detach, to not imagine that the bone you're setting is yours or that it is your own blood on your hands or your own skin that you suture or your own veins that you jab. She was never particularly squeamish, but there are degrees, and she learned to turn them all off and put them away, focusing on the constructive aspect of surgery, the positive outcomes of needles and exams, the technical competencies that allow her to complete her job.

Compartmentalising fear isn't all that different. It just takes a whole lot of practice.

When she discovers that she is pregnant, while Don is on the other side of the world, she is not sure how to feel. She wanted it, yes; they both did, they've talked about it more than a few times. But the timing. On the one hand, Don isn't there. He won't get to experience the progression of her pregnancy, rub her feet when she doubles in size, find out exactly how bitchy she can get when her hormones and bulk-induced sleeplessness combine into a deadly weapon.

The war might be over in eight more months, but she's not betting on that outcome any time soon.

So he'll miss all that. He'll probably miss the birth, and most of his kid's infancy, and God only knows how long he'll be on active duty only seeing his kid a few times a year. It's going to be so hard, for all of them.

But... she's going to have a child. That actually makes up for a lot.

When she tells him, during their first Skype conversation, he cries.

_____

_NOW_

"So this is what you _do?_ " Amelia asks. Sam has seen her wear a lot of skeptically unimpressed faces, but this one is basically the queen of all of them. He can hardly see her eyebrows.

"Yeah, our whole lives, basically," Sam says.

"Part of our afterlives, too," Dean puts in, and Amelia turns the face on him. "So to speak," he mutters.

Yeah. So to speak.

"I know it's a lot to take in," Sam tells her. She snorts a laugh.

"No _shit_ , Sherlock." She shakes her head wonderingly. "Did I ever know you at all?"

"You did," Sam rushes to assure her. "Nothing that I gave you was fake. It just... wasn't complete. And you can't tell me we weren't supposed to have secrets," he continues, "because I'm pretty sure that was sort of the whole point."

"Of course not." She waves a dismissive hand and then wraps it back around her mug of tea. Her hair is straggling down across her shoulders and soaking the blanket she's wearing like a cloak, curled up on the sofa in the low-ceilinged, old-fashioned sitting room. Sam's in a chair that he's afraid he'll end up breaking, but it's the biggest one available. Dean's leaning up against the wall by the door. "But, Sam. You gotta admit. This is a pretty huge deal. Like, what, did you not think I might ever need to know that there are actually things that go bump in the night?"

Sam flinches. Because, yeah, that's the whole problem, isn't it? He never can tell if it'll help or hurt, and he just. Had no capacity, this time, to even think about monsters and ghosts and the preternatural. That's an explanation for another time, though, or maybe never.

Unexpectedly, Dean jumps to his defense.

"Listen, there's a hell of a lot more out there than just monsters and ghosts," he says. "That's just the tip of the iceberg of creepy. We've dealt with angels, demons, been to Heaven, been to Hell-"

"You know how I thought Dean was dead, last year?" Sam adds. "Turns out he was in Purgatory."

Amelia just shakes her head slowly. "I'm really starting to feel like I'm being Punk'd, but something pulled me into that pool, so I'm giving you guys the benefit of the doubt on this one."

"Do that," Dean advises. "We're pretty good at this."

Sam groans. "Oh my god, Dean, can you let her process this?"

Amelia actually laughs at him, one short _hah_. "Sam. There is no possible way I can deal with anything more than bare surface level stuff right now. Processing is going to happen much later or possibly never. Just tell me what we have to do."

Dean levels a finger at her. " _You_ don't do anything. You stay put and stay away from water and stay safe. _We_ are gonna figure out what's doing this. You almost just became victim number six of whatever it is, and we'd really like there not to be any more."

"I don't know if you noticed, but 'stay put' and 'stay away from water' are kind of mutually exclusive instructions when I live _on the beach_."

"Maybe try emptying your pool, for starters," Dean shoots back. "Why is there even water in it?"

"I have no idea," Amelia says tiredly. "It was full when I got here, what was it, four days ago? Whenever Tuesday was."

"Four days," Sam confirms. Morning will bring Saturday.

"Okay." Amelia stands up. "I'm kicking you guys out now, because I need to go to sleep. But I want you to keep me updated on this whole thing." She's looking at Sam as she says this. "My number hasn't changed," she says, and her tone is faintly uncertain.

Sam clears his throat. "Then I still have it. I'll, yeah. We'll keep you in the loop."

She nods. Tired like this, no longer pinched with stress but just soft with impending sleep, her face is so beautiful. Sam swallows against the ball of emotion that's trying to grow in his throat.

Back at the car, Sam just stands there for a few minutes, looking out at the ocean. Dean doesn't say anything.

They go back to the motel. Sam sleeps badly.


	5. Chapter 5

 

_Don't you hear your lover moan?  
Eyes of glass and feet of stone_

 

When she began feeling ill, Mariana thought perhaps it was because she'd fallen in love, and now had to suffer her love's absence. It would be inconvenient, certainly, if this were to happen every time he were away, forever after. She didn't regret loving him, but this was not an effect she had anticipated. And he'd only been gone a few weeks. So far, at least, it was confined to the mornings, but if the sickness worsened, she might not last six months.

But when she told her mother, expecting some kind of advice or sympathy, her mother went pale.

"Did you lie with him?" she asked, her voice harsh. She almost never spoke to her daughter so; Mariana shrank back.

"He said we'd be married," she answered, as defiantly as she could.

"Much difference it makes," her mother said. "I thought you knew better, Mariana, I truly did. To think my daughter would be with child on her wedding day."

Mariana could not get another word out of her. Stung, she took her sewing outside and sat and looked over the green fields in the hot August sunlight, setting in sleeves and basting trim with tears in her eyes.

Late in the afternoon, Mariana's mother came out and sat by her.

"We'll cut your dress with a high waist," she said. "No telling how you'll carry, so we'll cut the skirt generously. We'll begin in November; by then I'll see better how you've grown."

Mariana nodded.

"Folk will talk," she went on. "I'll stand by my daughter, but they will. You'll have to stiffen your spine and hold your head up, for you've no father any longer, to stand between you and shame."

"I can bear my own shame."

"So you can." Mariana felt her mother's hand on her back and leaned in to be comforted. She was seventeen, but sometimes, she thought, a girl needs her mother.

Summer passed into autumn and Mariana's baby grew. None of the neighbours would speak to her; they only spoke about her. Except for the minister's wife, Mrs. Grange, and that was worse than being ignored, for Mrs. Grange, who thought she was being loving and kindly admonishing, had absolutely nothing of use to say, and only made Mariana feel like an unwanted insect, or a spot of dirt that needed cleaning.

"Sinners are always welcome in the Lord's house," she said one day, and Mariana nearly screamed at her.

She stopped going to church after that. The pitying, curious stares were more than she could bear. And then, too, there were the other kinds of looks, the ones from some of the men; looks that made her more uncomfortable than almost anything else. Speculative; avaricious. They frightened her, but she couldn't speak of them, even to her mother. What would she say? They were Christian men, married, devoted to their wives and children, and if they looked at her as a man might look at newly roasted meat, what could she say that would be believed? Her credibility was gone with her virtue.

So Mariana avoided them. She avoided everyone. She stopped going into town, remaining in the cottage to work while her mother did the errands.

At least the illness had passed. It was not comfortable, carrying a child, but it was a discomfort that could be managed. It did not disrupt her work, and since she never went anywhere, it did not hamper her mobility.

In actuality, Mariana walked almost more than she had before. She took to walking early in the morning, when the baby woke her up, and into the evening, wandering through the low hills and out along the shore. The sea reminded her of Daniel, and the more she missed him, the more she walked the beaches, climbing along the low cliffs and rocks when the weather and tide allowed it. The doctor said that too much exertion was dangerous for the baby, but her balance was still excellent, and she could not stay penned up in the cottage. Once in a vicious autumn squall they were housebound for three days and Mariana nearly paced a hole in the floor. So she continued to go out walking, and her mother did not stop her, even as autumn turned to winter and the snow began to fall.

_____

_THEN_

It's not like it came totally out of the blue. He's been talking about it for a while now, not just with her but among their friends, when they go out, talking about how everybody needs to do what they're good at and he feels like he might have a responsibility to help make the world suck less. That was always the point at which everyone (Amelia) laughed, and it's not like she didn't take him seriously; she just... didn't think he _was_ serious.

But he was apparently deadly serious, and she's not thinking about that phrasing because she's already upset.

"I just can't believe you didn't even talk to me about this," she says, incredulous.

"I did!" he says, just as incredulous. "Were you seriously not listening all those times we talked about exactly this? Haven't I been saying I need to pull my weight around this country?"

"Here's a tip," says Amelia. "Maybe if you want to have a serious conversation with your wife about _enlisting in the Army_ , you should actually sit down and have a serious conversation about exactly that, not just general patriotic sentiments. You talk like that all the time, Don. About _everything_ , did you know that? Everything you've ever been interested in, it's your next big cause. And nothing goes anywhere because you're a realist. Or I thought you were. So don't give me the 'we talked about this' bullshit, because we fucking _didn't_."

He's hurt. She can see it. She didn't quite mean to dig so harshly at him, but, seriously, there was not a conversation about this. They never had that conversation. And he doesn't seem to understand why that's a problem.

"I thought you got it," he says, and, oh, no, he doesn't.

"I can't read your mind."

"I thought I was being clear."

"You can't read my mind!" Her voice is rising again and she deliberately turns off the part of her that cares. "I thought we already went through this after the Dakota fiasco."

He flinches. "That's low."

"No, it's relevant," she counters. "We decided to talk about important stuff until we're both on the same page or we agree to disagree, remember? And we have _always_ done that. And now you enlist without discussing it with me and you think that's okay? That's _so not okay_ , Don."

"You agreed with me," he insists, but he sounds a lot less sure now.

"In theory. That's not- no, you know what? We're talking in circles. Can we come back to this in an hour?"

Don looks at his watch. "Can we make it two? I have a meeting in half an hour, but it shouldn't take very long."

Amelia closes her eyes. "Okay, two hours."

She goes out to the garden and does some digging. They moved into the house a month back and it's too late in the season to get any serious yield, but it's not too soon to start planning for next year, and if she wants vegetables the plot needs to be bigger.

It's soothing work, fairly rhythmic, and it requires just enough thought that she can distract herself from thinking about the fight.

They fight pretty frequently, honestly, mostly small blow-ups about stupid things, and she'd rather have it that way than let things fester and simmer and either explode later or quietly erode their marriage until there's nothing left to stay for. As long as they care enough to give each other grief, they're in good shape.

This one's different, though. They haven't fought about anything this big since they were married, actually. The situation with Dakota happened when they were engaged, and was basically a case of miscommunication fomenting a whole lot of bad feelings and blaming and nastiness. No one even did anything wrong, or nothing major, anyway. It was a series of unexamined misunderstandings.

Which is how their whole strategy of clear communication came about, and why Amelia feels so-

betrayed?

Betrayed.

She works through that one for a bit before she tackles Don's side. To be fair, maybe he got complacent. Maybe they both did. They haven't fought over anything major in so long. And- yeah, she remembers all that talk, and how proud and fond and amused she was, and how she egged him on. Because she believed was sincere, but she never once thought he was serious. She never thought he'd actually enlist. But she encouraged him.

Maybe he's not completely in the wrong here.

After two hours, they meet back in the kitchen, designated site of all dispute resolution. When she gets there, wet hair in a bun after a quick shower, he's pulling things out of the fridge and getting dinner started. She goes to join in.

The knives actually help them stay calm. Neither of them wants to actually wound the other, so they keep their actions peaceful, which keeps their talking peaceful. This is standard operating procedure: flare up, yell for a bit, cool off, resolve in the kitchen.

"I'm sorry," is the first thing Don says, when they're about halfway through the food prep. Amelia makes a noncommittal noise. "I made assumptions and we agreed not to do that."

"I'm sorry too," Amelia says after a short pause. "I let you think we had an understanding that we didn't." It's not an admission of wrongdoing; neither of them did this deliberately. It's an acceptance of responsibility.

Don nods. "I can't just un-enlist, though," he says, emptying the frying pan full of leeks into the soup pot.

"No, I get that." Amelia dumps in the bacon. "I'm still upset," she adds. "It'll probably take a while."

"I thought so, yeah." He puts the lid on and leaves it to simmer.

They look at each other for a moment.

"I'm going to set the table," says Amelia.

"Hang on." Don steps in. "Are we okay for now?"

"For now, yeah." She turns up her face and lets him kiss her.

"I can work with that."

_____

_NOW_

Dean barges back into the motel room with coffee at eight or so. Sam snaps out of yet another fitful doze and sits up reluctantly.

"Hey, that coffee actually smells good." He sniffs appreciatively.

"Yeah, found a different coffee place, that other one sucked." Sam takes this to mean that Dean didn't care to risk bumping into Amelia again so soon. Not that Sam can blame him.

"So this thing that tried to snatch Amelia," Dean begins as soon as Sam is partially caffeinated.

"It seems awfully coincidental that we'd see the Lantern Woman right beforehand if it weren't connected," Sam hazards, and Dean nods, but looks thoughtful.

"Yeah, here's the thing, though," he says. "It didn't really look like her at all."

"I thought you didn't get a good look?"

"I didn't, but what I saw... it just didn't seem her style."

"Her _style_. Okay." Sam sits back and smirks. "'Cause one sighting totally makes you an expert. One sketchy sighting, at that."

"Yeah, well." Dean frowns. "I don't want to assume it was her. I didn't get the vengeful vibe from her, you know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah." Sam agrees, actually. As many ghosts as they've seen, there's an instinct that gets built, and sometimes they just know things.

"I was thinking, though, the way it snatched Amelia? She said it actually reached out and pulled her into the pool. That sounds like some kind of Jenny Greenteeth business."

"Didn't Jenny mostly take children, though?" Sam reaches for the pages Dean slides over to him. "Like, cautionary tale kind of thing?"

"Yeah, mostly children and the elderly, but what if she's just the really famous one? Or, like, some kind of aggregate legend of a bunch of different water monsters that all do the same kind of thing? Like, some kind of general snatching-people-into-the-water thing."

"Well," Sam says, "but are we sure this isn't some variant of a rusalka?"

"No, but that's my point," Dean says patiently. "Maybe rusalkas are related to Jenny Greenteeth and whatever this is is related to the both of them."

"Okay, fair enough. But how do we find this one, and, more importantly, how do we kill it?"

"There were some indications in a couple of sources I found that Jenny Greenteeth started out human." Dean shuffles through the papers upside-down and points to a relevant sentence.

"Great." Sam huffs out a sigh. "Well, at least that probably means it's vulnerable to one of the standard things, anyway."

"Do you think it matters who this one was?" Dean muses. "I mean, it doesn't for wendigos and werewolves and- and vampires." Sam pretends not to notice Dean tripping over that. The Benny conversation is one he's putting off having again for as long as possible. "Not really. But if they're at all like ghosts or demons, it might help us to know something about the person it used to be. Give us an edge. 'Cause for damn sure it's not going to be vulnerable to fire."

"Which is kind of our default for this type of thing, yeah," Sam agrees. "Okay. But I'm seeing a huge roadblock here."

"We have no idea where to even start figuring out this thing's identity? Yeah." Dean scrubs a hand down his face. "Unless- wait, wait, wait." He shuffles through papers. "All the deaths have been within a mile of the Lantern Woman's walk. Even if it's not her, there might still be a connection."

"It's a leap," says Sam slowly, "but it's actually not that big of one."

"Right?" Dean is starting to look excited for the first time since they found this case. "Dude. She had a lover. In all the stories, she had a lover who drowned. If we can find out who she was, we should be able to find out who he was."

"We know who she was, actually." Sam rummages a bit and unearths the sheaf of notebook pages that he hasn't gotten around to putting back in the rings yet. He thumbs through until he finds the one with the deep crimson edge and flips it over. "Back of the very first page. 'Probably Mariana Bolton, 1794-1811.'" He passes it to Dean, who reads it and looks back up at Sam with a grin.

"We got the son of a bitch."

A full morning of library work produces the name Daniel Farrier, whose family was apparently a big deal in Maryland. He seems to have been a bit of a disgrace, though, and they packed him off to sea to keep him out of trouble.

"His ship was lost," Dean says triumphantly. "What did I tell you."

"Wait, though, hang on," Sam says. "He's buried in the cemetery in Annapolis."

"What?" Dean grabs Sam's book and looks for himself. "What."

"Says he died abroad, had his remains shipped back because his family didn't want him buried on foreign soil."

"I do not envy the crew on _that_ ship," Dean says absently, skimming through. "Wow. Okay. So he... drowned, inland, _in Spain_ , they recovered his body and he's buried here?"

"Yeah. Bizarre."

"Understatement." He looks up. "You know what this means."

"Possibly vulnerable to fire after all?" Sam feels his face split into a grin. "Worth a try."


	6. Chapter 6

  
  


_Eyes wide open, never asleep  
He's looking for the ring_  
  
  
They cut her wedding dress in mid-November.  
  
It was far from her first new dress since she had got with child; in September her loosest dress would barely close, so she had hastily made up new clothes for herself between working on commissions. Her mother's custom had not diminished at all, and Mariana was grateful for the city officials' indifference to the reputation of those they patronised, or else that her and her mother's work was fine enough to offset the stain on her character.  
  
Business was good enough, in fact, that they could afford silk: ivory, because even Mariana knew that it would be laughable for her to be married in white. The gown was cut in the style of the last century, high-waisted and full-skirted, with room for her to grow even more before January and generous seam allowance besides. The sleeves and train she embroidered herself, sitting before the fire and straining to distinguish thread from cloth on nights when the wind outside blew bitterly cold and the dark and the snow made walking dangerous. Come December, she began walking in the middle of the day, heedless of her mother's worried glances. Her sewing was not suffering; if anything, it was even more pristine and careful than ever before. The space of days before the Mary Florence was due to return seemed a fathomless gulf, though it shrank daily, and sometimes all that kept her from tearing out her hair or running from the house in a fit was the perfect mechanical precision of her tiny stitches.  
  
Her back ached constantly and her heart longed for Daniel.  
  
_____  
  
  
 _THEN_  
  
Nothing goes right, except that at the end of the day, they're married.  
  
The weather was supposed to be clear right through to the end of August, but a freak storm blows in and Amelia wakes up to lashing rain and gusting wind. So much for the outdoor ceremony.  
  
She pokes herself in the eye with her facecloth and accidentally swallows toothpaste and the running-around-before-dressing-properly jeans she pulls on decide to pick this day of all days to just give up on life and split.  
  
It's enough to give a woman a complex.  
  
At least they have a backup plan for inclement weather. Amelia's mom insisted. She's going to be insufferable about the I-told-you-sos, but that is completely the least of Amelia's worries.  
  
Lucy woke up with laryngitis, it transpires, which is going to seriously cramp her maid-of-honour style. Her face when she meets Amelia at the venue is priceless, frustration warring with apology.  
  
"It's okay, Lu, I know you didn't do this on purpose," Amelia tells her. "Or, wait, did you?" That gets her a fist to the shoulder. "Okay, all right. It's fine, though, really. I got this."  
  
Don's sister pitches in for all she's worth, bridesmaid heroic to the end, and Amelia's got to give her credit for trying, but she just got in from Canada or something and she doesn't really know enough about what's going on to help.  
  
There's a catering emergency, which fortunately Amelia's mom refuses to let anyone but herself handle, because if there was anything she specifically wanted nothing to do with it was the catering.   
  
When the florist has a meltdown, Don handles it, and she is going to marry that man.  
  
It's the best feeling ever that that's not hyperbole anymore.  
  
There's apparently been a mix-up with the hotel reservations, so someone has to find alternate accommodation for all the out-of-towners, but Dallas is big enough that that one's not that hard, and Amelia makes those calls and then delegates Chuck, Don's best man, to make sure everyone hears about the updated situation.  
  
Thank God nothing goes wrong with her dress.  
  
The veil, on the other hand, somehow ended up out of its protective covering and, more importantly, out of the closet, and Amelia's cousin's cat gets at it.  
  
She is  _this close_  to crying.  
  
Gloria gets to be the one who makes it right, and braves the temperamental florist to request a last-minute hair ornament of some kind.   
  
Amelia's not going to tell her, but she's kind of glad Gloria's cat shredded her veil. The half-coronet of tiny white flowers ends up actually looking better.  
  
Then finally it's the ceremony, and she walks in and sees Don waiting for her, and nothing else matters, not the baby that starts crying halfway through the vows, not the numerous issues and little annoyances and full-out problems that the day presented. This is the best day of her life.  
  
Even though half the guests get lost on the way to the reception hall despite copious signage. Even though the band turns out to be kind of mediocre and someone loses a shoe dancing and someone else finds it by stepping on it and there's almost a turf war on the dance floor. Even though more little things go wrong, because Murphy's law, that's why.  
  
Things are manageable. And she has Don.  
  
They're dancing to the sweetly terrible music late in the evening and Amelia is in her husband's arms and just has a moment where everything clicks into focus. The day has been so long and frustrating, it's been hard to even catch up, but here in their own domain in the middle of the floor, in each other's space, united, she finally realises.  
  
"Hey," she says softly, right into Don's ear.  
  
"Mm?" He pulls her in a little more securely and a shiver of satisfaction runs through her.  
  
"I get to keep you."  
  
He pulls back a little, then, to look her in the eye. "All the way to the end, babe." He's got that smile on that she can't ever resist, the one where his eyes are so full of fondness and his face looks like it's about to split from all the happiness.  
  
She laughs and rubs her face against his. "All the way."  
_____  
  
 _NOW_  
  
Digging graves is one of the things Sam never thought he'd miss, but it's such a rarity nowadays that they get a case that's straightforward enough to require it. It's mindlessly satisfying, just moving earth until the job's done, using muscles he barely taxed at all that last year. It feels good, actually. They're really good at this.  
  
Nothing manifests while they're working on the grave, and Sam is in a state of suspense until the bones are burning.  
  
"Crap, I just thought of something," he says as they're monitoring the fire. "How do we know if this works? We can't actually surveil the whole kill area."  
  
Dean thinks for a second, then cringes slightly. "Okay, I have an idea, but you're not gonna like it."  
  
"What," says Sam warily.  
  
"Bait."  
  
"Wha-  _no_." Dean cannot seriously be suggesting what Sam thinks he's suggesting.  
  
"At least run it by her," Dean insists. "You promised to update her. I'd say this is relevant."  
  
Sam sags. "Fine, but she won't agree to it," he says, more out of the need to be difficult than because he actually believes what he's saying.  
  
He calls her right away, even though it's midnight. Considering she was out in her yard past midnight last night, she's probably not sleeping. She's a night owl anyway, he knows this.  
  
"Sam?" Amelia sounds a little tired, but perfectly awake.  
  
"Yeah, it's me." Sam clears his throat. "Uh, we found out a lot today. Can we come over and talk about it?"  
  
She's silent for a moment. "Okay," she says finally.  
  
She offers them tea when they arrive, which is such a huge alteration for the better from what he expected when he ran into her at the coffee shop that he almost can't comprehend his life for a moment.  
  
"Hit me," she says when they're settled around the table in the cramped kitchen.  
  
Dean explains most of it, Sam filling in relevant details, until they get to the most recent step in the proceedings.  
  
"If you want to lay a ghost, usually all you have to do is salt the bones and burn them to dust," Sam explains. "Sometimes there's other things tethering the spirit here, but usually that's either still human remains or else some particular object or unfinished task that was important to the person in life."  
  
Amelia's nodding. "You said this isn't actually a ghost, though?"  
  
"No, but we're treating it like one to see if it works, because it used to be a person," Dean explains. "If it doesn't work, we'll have to get fancy."  
  
"How will you know, though? If it worked?"  
  
Sam exchanges a glance with Dean. This is the part Sam's been dreading.  
  
"That's a little tricky in this case," he says. He takes a deep breath. "Actually, we- Dean thought you might be able to help us with that."  
  
"Me?" She puts her cup down. "What do I have to do?"  
  
Sam's eyes widen, but Dean doesn't miss a beat. "We want to use you as bait. With as many safeguards as possible," he adds quickly, but Amelia doesn't seem concerned. She looks to Sam.  
  
"If it's dead, nothing happens, right?" Sam nods. "And if it's not, it's going to come after someone, right?" He nods again. It's clear where this is going. "Then it should be someone who knows what's going on and can prepare," she finishes. God, he loves her. Her shoulders are hunched a bit, but her face is determined.  
  
"Are you sure?" Dean asks. "We haven't told you the plan yet."  
  
"I'll do it." She drains her tea. "Whatever it is, I'll do it. When do we start?"


	7. Chapter 7

  
  


_The spools unravel and the needles break  
The sun is buried and the stars weep_  
  
  
Just before Christmas she caught a chill that turned into a fever. Her mother forced her into bed and refused to let her sew.  
  
"But you can't finish three gowns yourself by Saturday," she protested. She tried to get out of bed, but failed to even sit up.  
  
"There, you see," said her mother, looking pinched around the eyes, "you stay where you're warm. I'll manage somehow."  
  
When the fever stayed, the doctor was called. Mariana, half delirious by this point, did not notice him until he bent over her bed to peer into her eyes.  
  
"You mustn't," she said with difficulty. "I'm to be married."  
  
The doctor laughed uncomfortably. It grated in her ears. She closed her eyes and hoped he would go away. Behind her eyelids, she saw her Daniel, and smiled at him.  
  
"Dangerously high," she heard him say, but it didn't matter, because she felt his cool hands at her neck, gentle and soothing, and soon she would be his forever, and have his child to keep her company when he went away again, and as she slipped back into high-strung dreams her urgency for him rose. Once they were married, everything would be all right again. Once they were married, she need not worry anymore.  
  
After the fever broke, a strange lassitude carried over. It was difficult for her to move around, because of the baby, and difficult to sit still, because of the baby, and very difficult for her to focus on her work, because her baby had no father yet.  
  
As the days drew closer and closer to the expected arrival of the Mary Florence, Mariana became more and more restless, even as her gravid body resisted her every move. On clear days she walked out as long as the light lasted, staying up into the night to sew.  
  
"Mariana," said her mother one evening, when any day they might expect to hear news of the Mary Florence, "you need your rest. I can manage the commissions. I won't have you making yourself ill."  
  
"I won't sleep," she said tiredly. "I can't."  
  
"You must try."  
  
"Must I?" She rounded on her mother. "Must I lie in bed and drive myself to distraction with expectation while the baby kicks? That is all that will happen, mother. I have tried. I'll try no more."  
  
"I don't like to see you exhausting yourself," her mother muttered, but she let it lie. Mariana was sleeping no more than a few hours every night, but her mind and her child, both almost ceaselessly active, would not allow more. It was not for much longer, she told herself. Soon Daniel would be home, and everything would be all right.  
  
_____  
  
 _THEN_  
  
Don jokes so much of the time that when she first knew him it took quite a while for her to be able to tell when he was serious about something.  
  
By the time they've been dating a year, she's pretty sure she's got it mostly figured out, so when they're out the week after their anniversary and they pass by a jewelry store and he says, "Hey, we should get married," she laughs and says, "Absolutely. Whenever you want."  
  
She goes over to Lucy's to study later and tells her, figures Lucy'll get a chuckle out of it.  
  
Lucy looks at her very seriously.  
  
"Let me get this straight," she says. "Your boyfriend, who adores you and with whom I've frankly never seen you happier, asked you to marry him, and you said yes, and you expect me to laugh like that's a funny joke?"  
  
Amelia frowns. "Yes? I mean, it's not like he was serious."  
  
Lucy blows out a frustrated breath. "Okay, I know you're his girlfriend and everything, but I knew him first, remember?"  
  
"And?"  
  
"Just. Trust me when I say I think you might need to re-examine your interpretation."  
  
There's a pause.   
  
"Wait, you think he was serious?" Lucy nods. Amelia shakes her head. "I'm really pretty sure you're wrong about that. And besides, we're not ready to get married! I mean, neither of us is done school, just for starters, and it's only been a year, and I don't think his mother likes me-" she cuts herself off. "Now look what you've done," she says accusingly. "I can't concentrate on avian anatomy  _now_."  
  
"So call him and check."  
  
"Right, because that's not going to be embarrassing at all. 'Hey, so you know how you kind of asked me to marry you today? Any chance you were serious?' Eighty-twenty he laughs at me and I never hear the end of it."  
  
"For someone who was totally skeptical a minute ago, that 20 seems kind of high odds for his being serious," Lucy remarks.   
  
"No, I'm leaving a significant margin for a painfully kind letdown."  
  
She doesn't call. It's not phone conversation material, not when they see each other pretty much every day anyway.  
  
Next time she sees him is at school between classes, and they only have a few minutes, but she says, quick, before she loses her nerve, "Lucy thinks you were serious about getting married."  
  
He pauses and looks down at her. "I was," he says carefully.  
  
The wind goes out of her lungs. "Oh," she says, small.   
  
"Yeah."  
  
A thought hits her. "Oh, god, did you think-"  
  
"No, no, I knew  _you_  weren't." He smiles, but it's not his best. It's not the complete real one.  
  
Damn it.  
  
"You know I love you, right?" It's all she can think to say.  
  
"I do, yeah." He kisses her and she melts into it, relieved. They're still okay.  
  
She can't stop thinking about it, though. All the reasons she listed off to Lucy about why they shouldn't get married right now are still valid, it's not like their practical situation has changed, but she can't help imagining how nice it would be to just. Get married. Have that security. She never was the kind of person to set an expiry date on relationships, but most of her previous ones were obviously the kind with less longevity. Some relationships have legs and some don't, and sometimes you can just tell right away.  
  
Her and Don, they've got legs. He's in every future she imagines, and they've talked about what they're going to do after they finally graduate - they, collective, the two of them as a unit - and it's not like she's never thought about marrying him before. She just didn't think it would happen any time soon.  
  
But now that she's thinking about it again... well, none of the reasons she gave were real obstacles. Sure, they're both broke, but they'll both have loans from here to kingdom come, so if they wait until they can "afford it", it won't happen until they're forty. If they wait until they have time, well, it doesn't seem possible that real life can be more intense than grad school, but Amelia has it on good authority that life basically gets more complex and difficult until you die. And it wouldn't hurt to have a partner in complexity.  
  
So now she's actually leaning towards thinking  _holy crap, I think we should get married_ , except she shot him down last week and it's going to be embarrassing as hell to go back on that.  
  
It's probably worth it, though.  
  
On Don's couch, pretending to watch a movie but mostly just snuggling, Amelia's pretty sure he's falling asleep, so she pokes him.  
  
"Hey."  
  
He snuffles an inquisitive noise. Her heart almost explodes with how much she loves him.  
  
"So I was thinking," she goes on. "About what you said last week. How we should, um."  
  
He cracks his eye open and looks at her, faintly amused. "Yeah, I'm not helping you out with this one."  
  
She slaps his chest. "Shut up. Let's get married, okay?"  
  
His grin is complete and luminous and unapolagetic. "When I get you a ring we'll do this right," he promises.  
  
"Please," she says, putting her head back down, "like either of us is concerned about that."  
  
"Your mom will be."  
  
"You might have a point."  
  
They go ring shopping together because Don has terrible taste in jewelry and knows it very well. Then Amelia pretends to forget all about it and then a week or so later they're out at dinner and she actually has forgotten and Don suddenly gets up and goes to one knee by their little table in the corner of the half-empty pizzeria and Amelia almost starts crying. She saves it, only just, and answers "Yes, obviously," and kisses him, and the lone waiter applauds.  
  
_____  
 _NOW_  
  
They start immediately. "So if it isn't dead, it doesn't get a chance to pick someone else?" Amelia guesses.  
  
"Basically, yeah." Dean clips the spotlight to the wing mirror mount and checks it, pointing away from the water. They're parked on the bluff where they saw Mariana disappear last night. Sam is helping Amelia with her climbing harness, hooking her up to the cable on the winch in the trunk. She double-checks all the buckles and tightens a couple of straps.  
  
"Okay," Sam says, "you're good to go."  
  
Amelia nods and hesitates, looking up at him.  
  
"Listen, Sam," she says, "just in case-"  
  
"You're going to be fine," he interrupts desperately.  
  
"I know, silly." She smiles at him. "I just want you to know, I'm still a little mad at you for leaving, but I get it. We were never going to last. But... I'm glad I got you for that year." She leans up on her tiptoes and presses a swift kiss to his mouth, then turns and heads down the rocky shoulder of the cliff, parallel to the sheer drop down to the beach and the incoming tide.  
  
Sam watches and feeds out the line as she goes. It's steel cable, definitely strong enough to withstand the pull of whatever Daniel Farrier has become, even if he's more powerful in the ocean or something. The spotlight's ready to scare him away if he does grab on, and once they've got Amelia out of there they can start figuring out what else to try.  
  
Or maybe Daniel's already laid to rest and nothing will happen. Sam can only hope.  
  
Luck, as ever, is not with them. Not two minutes after Amelia hits the beach, the moonlit tide rushes in faster than it should, envelops her ankles and starts to pull her out with it. She loses her balance just as Sam's taken up all the slack on the winch, so she ends up suspended at a strange angle between the water and the cable.  
  
"Dean," Sam shouts, but before Dean can bring the spotlight around there's a cold gust of wind and a new light source. When he looks, there's Mariana, coming along the beach with her lantern, purposefully heading toward the incline that Amelia just went down. She seems not to notice what's going on around her at all.  
  
The tide lets go of Amelia and she swings a short distance before landing mostly on her feet, still partially supported by the harness and cable. Sam lets out a little more slack, watching the water.  
  
Something is there.  
  
Something is coming out of the water. Lit by faint moonlight and a ghostly lantern, it is mostly man-shaped, its eyes reflecting like polished stones, feet stepping with a careful clumsiness, heavy and inflexible, no longer accustomed to walking. It moves toward Amelia, who is standing harnessed to a cable at the bottom of a cliff with no way to manoeuvre. Sam curses himself, viciously and silently, and goes to reel the cable in. It'll be slow, but so is the creature.  
  
Dean stops him with a hand on his arm before he can really get started.  
  
"Look."  
  
The figure has stopped. Amelia is completely immobile, radiating tension, and the lumbering remnant of Daniel stands in front of her, head sagging, looking lost. Then it raises its head and slowly, slowly looks around.  
  
After an eternal moment, it turns toward the ghost of Mariana Bolton, still making her laborious way down the beach. She doesn't seem to see it, doesn't falter or flicker or so much as turn her head.  
  
Slowly, determinedly, it moves toward Mariana, who still continues, apparently oblivious.  
  
Then Mariana stops. Tilting her head as though someone has called her name, she slowly turns until she is facing the creature that was once Daniel.  
  
There is a moment of perfect stillness.  
  
Then all at once they move together with inhuman swiftness, drawn like magnets, until Mariana is looking up at Daniel's ruined face and Daniel places a careful blunt hand on her neck, the other tender on her belly. For another moment they stand motionless. Then Mariana drops her lamp and the light seems to grow up from where it falls, winding up around the two of them until they are too bright to look at. Sam covers his eyes as the light flares to painful brightness, then opens them again to dark, empty sand.  
  
"Where did they go?" Amelia's voice comes up quietly from the beach below.  
  
"It's hard to say," Sam admits. "They'd lost so much of what they were when they were alive."  
  
"But it doesn't like they lost what made them human," Amelia points out gently.  
  
Sam turns that over in his head. He's had a lot of people tell him what it means to be human over the years. He still hasn't reached an answer that satisfies him.  
  
"You might be right about that."  
  



	8. Chapter 8

  
  


_Oh black wave, take me down with you  
Take me down to my wand'ring lover  
With my child unborn_  
  
  
Though the ship was every day expected, it did not arrive, and did not arrive, and Mariana's anxiety seemed to fill her up completely, every part of her swollen body a receptacle for the strain of frustrated expectation. She began to feel that she was made of nothing but worry and longing; that she, Mariana the seamstress, was transforming into a creature composed of raw nerve endings and little else.  
  
"Today he will come," she said, every morning, and every day he did not come.  
  
Then, one day, there was news.  
  
Mariana's mother came from answering the knock at the door with a face the colour of the snowdrifts by the windows.  
  
"Oh, child," she said, "oh, my poor girl, he is gone. His ship was lost."  
  
She stood, heedless of the embroidery tumbling from her lap to the floor. The room tilted around her, and her mother's arms came around her, but she pushed them away and straightened, and the world would not still, but she kept her feet.  
  
"No," she said. "No, he will come. He promised. He promised me."  
  
" _Mariana_." It was almost a sob. "You must face this. I know this is hard news, and little to console you but his child, but you must-"  
  
"No." She shook her head. "He promised, and he will come. I will not give up hope. They are mistaken; they must be." She went into her bedchamber and shut the door. Then she lay on her bed.  
  
She felt as though she were floating.  _Lost. Daniel's ship, lost._  It could not be. It must not be. Tomorrow, or the day after, or surely in a very few days after that, the Mary Florence would come in sight, and everyone would see that they were mistaken, and she would marry Daniel, and everything would be all right.  
  
She lay in a haze all that night, losing track of herself but never losing the thought that her Daniel must still come.  
  
In the morning, she got up and retrieved her work from the floor, dusted it off, and continued sewing. Her mother, perhaps afraid to set her off, said little all day. After supper, Mariana said,  
  
"I must be ready when he comes. We will want to waste no time."  
  
Her dress was ready, and had been for weeks; it fit perfectly about her rounded body, accommodating her bosom that had grown to twice its former size. She went and put it on, and when she looked at herself in the glass, she smiled. She was not beautiful like some of the town girls, but in her white gown she looked just as she had always thought a bride should.  
  
"Look, mother," she said, going back out to show her, and her mother put a hand over her mouth, tears springing to her eyes. "I know," Mariana said gently, "I know. Thank you."  
  
She made to get her cloak.  
  
"What are you doing?" her mother choked out.  
  
"Why, if no one is expecting the ship, someone must guide it in," she said, and took the lantern from beside the door.  
  
"It is not coming, Mariana! It will never come!"  
  
Mariana faced her sternly. "Mother, you said you would stand by me. Stand by me now. I must do this."  
  
Her mother, face full of horror, reached hurriedly for her own cloak. Mariana went out into the snow.  
  
As she went, she heard her mother calling after her, but she paid no heed. She had a task to accomplish. Someone must guide the ship in, so Daniel might come home.  
  
The drifts were piled above her knees, and it was a struggle to cross the fields. She nearly fell several times, once when her train caught on a hidden snarl of dead bramble, once when she had to climb a fence, more times than she really counted just from the uneven ground beneath the snow. Her boots began to fill with snow, and her feet went numb. She barely noticed.  
  
Once, she dropped the lantern, and only luck kept it from going out. That was the most frightening thing of all.  
  
When she finally reached the tumbling slope down to the beach, her heart leaped. There was the sea before her, and Daniel was somewhere on it, as eager to reach her as she was to receive him. She held up her lantern as well as she could as she made her way down, forgetful of the lighthouse out of sight around the headland. Her lantern was the only way she knew to help the Mary Florence reach safe harbour. But she was so low, on the beach; perhaps they could not see it.  
  
Farther along, the beach gave way to low cliffs. From there, surely, a ship could spot her lantern. She made her way down the snow-covered sand as quickly as she could, careful of ice, careful of her footing, for it would not do to lose her lantern here, so close. Her body fought her the whole way; her baby kicked out, it must be with excitement.  
  
"Hush, darling," she crooned, "I know, I know. Your Papa's coming. We're going to meet him."  
  
She struggled to get her breath as she climbed; her head swirled, and snow was beginning to fall again. The black waves lapped below her, disorienting, and her feet kept slipping. It was a long climb, much longer than she remembered; surely she should have reached the top twice over.  
  
At the top, she lost her footing again when the steep incline leveled out suddenly, and the snow beneath her tread was not as high as she expected. She fell, but only to her knees. The pain gave her focus.  
  
She approached the edge of the cliff, looking out to sea, lantern held aloft. He must be out there, surely. If only she could see some sign of him, some glimpse of his ship! She did not understand why it was taking so long. She was here, now; where was he?  
  
One more step, and the uneven drifts betrayed her feet yet again. Her whole body jolted as she fought to stay upright, but her numb fingers could not keep hold of the lantern.  
  
She let out a cry of anguish as the lantern fell, not down to the forgiving snowy cliff but over, down, into the inky roil below, its light disappearing as it hit the water.  
  
For uncounted moments she stood immobile, staring after her lantern. Gone. Lost. Her light, her hope, was lost.  
  
Then: perhaps, she thought, this was her sign.  
  
Of course. He was not coming on the ship. They were right, and his ship was lost, so he was come to her without the ship, and he was waiting for her. Perhaps the lantern was not to beckon him to her. Perhaps it was to lead her to him.  
  
She put her hand on her belly, soothing the child, who was kicking again.  
  
"It's all right, love," she said softly. "We're going to meet Papa."  
  
Smiling, she stepped off the cliff.  
  
_____  
  
 _THEN_  
  
Amelia is having a perfectly acceptable day. It's sunny, it's March, birds are singing, class is cancelled and she is taking advantage of the free slot to go get an actual decent coffee at the place across campus and maybe study a bit. Organic chemistry's not that bad, but the professor is terrifying, and Amelia would really like to maintain her 3.8.  
  
Her day is going totally fine. A random stranger smiles at her on the way to The Roasting Pit, so she smiles back. This morning's rain has left things a bit muggy, but there are daffodils peeking out all along the walkway and the air smells like new grass.  
  
As she's waiting to cross the street, source of sweet java nectar within her sights, a yellow Porsche goes roaring through the intersection a little too close to the curb, kicks up a sheet of water from the puddle there, and soaks her to the waist.  
  
Fantastic.  
  
There's muffled laughter from just behind her. She whips around and glares at the guy. "Something funny?" she demands.  
  
"Oh, god, I'm so sorry," the guy gasps out, still trying not to full-out laugh, and she grudgingly respects his attempt. "That sucks, I just, it was so-" he makes a swift gesture. "Happened so fast, the humour's in the timing?" he tries, and she has to give him that.  
  
Actually, she doesn't have to give him anything. "Yeah," she says, full sarcasm engaged, "I obviously think it's hilarious." She stares him down, and his suppressed laughter dies, finally.  
  
"Hey, I'm sorry," he says seriously. "I didn't mean to make fun. Let me make it up to you?" She raises both eyebrows. "I'm headed to get coffee," he elaborates. "Can I get you something?"  
  
She finds out, sitting in really very uncomfortably damp pants, that his name is Don, he's a third-year materials engineering student, and when he's not laughing at her misfortune he has a really infectious laugh.  
  
"So this might end up a bad association for you, I don't know, that's fine, but on the off chance you'd like to do this again some time, could I have your number?" he asks hopefully as they stand to throw out their empty cups.  
  
Amelia thinks about it.  
  
"Tell you what," she says. "You give me yours, and I'll call you."  
  
His grin takes over his whole face.  
  
She meets up with Lucy and Paulbert and She-yoon later in the evening, ostensibly to motivate each other to write their English papers, but in reality they're just hanging out. She-yoon keeps eyeing Amelia suspiciously.  
  
"What?" she asks finally.  
  
"You're happy," says She-yoon flatly.  
  
"And?"  
  
"Actually, she's right," Lucy interjects. "I knew something was weird. What's going on?"  
  
"What," says Paulbert, who's a relatively new friend, "is Amelia not a happy person usually?"  
  
"You've had class with her all semester and you're just finding this out?" She-yoon scoffs.  
  
"Hey," Amelia protests. "I'm not unhappy. I just don't like 8am classes."  
  
"Who does?" Paulbert offers genially.  
  
"Exactly," says Amelia. "Thank you."  
  
"No, but this is weird, you're, like, smiling randomly and stuff." Lucy frowns. "Did something cool happen and you didn't tell me?"  
  
"What? No." Amelia thinks. "Oh. Well, actually, yeah. I, um, met this guy?"  
  
Lucy hoots. "I  _knew_  it!"  
  
Paulbert holds up both hands. "Officially unqualified to participate in this conversation."  
  
"That's fine, you sit there and just observe," says She-yoon. "Amelia. Speak."  
  
"Okay, short version: I got soaked by a car, some jerk laughed and then felt bad and bought me coffee, and then he gave me his number."  
  
"He's a jerk even though he bought you coffee?" Paulbert asks.  
  
"Thought you weren't qualified," snips She-yoon.  
  
"I'm confused," he explains.  
  
"Well, I thought he was a jerk when he was laughing at me," Amelia says. "He. May not actually be."  
  
"Hah," says Lucy. "You  _like_  him. Is he hot? What's his name? Does he go here?"  
  
"Or you could wait for me to answer your questions one at a time," Amelia says drily. Lucy shrugs,  _but where's the fun in that?_ , and puts her chin on her hands expectantly. She-yoon and Paulbert are also listening intently. Amelia takes a breath.  
  
"Yes, he's pretty good-looking-" she's interrupted by a triumphant noise from Lucy, who shuts up at a glare "-and his name is Don. He does go here. MatEng."  
  
"Hey, I know a Don in MatEng," Lucy says. "Think it's the same guy?"  
  
Amelia shrugs. "How should I know?"  
  
"You're going to call him, right?" She-yoon asks.  
  
"I guess. Probably. He seemed like a nice guy. Nice smile."  
  
"Good sense of humour?" mocks Lucy.  
  
"Shut up and write your paper."  
  
She calls him two days later.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Hi, uh, Don? This is Amelia. From the coffee shop the other day?"  
  
"Amelia! Hi!" He sounds so happy to hear from her. It's a little overwhelming. "I wasn't sure you were going to call."  
  
Amelia smiles. "Well, you did laugh at my misfortune. Could you have blamed me if I hadn't?"  
  
"Not at all. But I'm glad you did."  
  
There's a small pause. Before it can get too awkward, Amelia braces herself and dives in.  
  
"Do you want to hang out again? Maybe this weekend?"  
  
"I would love to. What did you have in mind?"  
  
"Uh, well, there's a show at the campus pub, my friend's cousin plays bass for this band, False Bottom? I was going to go hear them, if you want to come with me?"  
  
"I actually was going anyway, the drummer's a friend of my sister's."  
  
"You're kidding." There's a giddiness building inside Amelia, a sense that this is going in a really good direction.  
  
"Cross my heart. Meet you there at 7?"  
  
"Yeah, sounds good."  
  
"Okay, see you then."  
  
"Yeah, see you."  
  
Amelia hangs up with her heart beating a little faster than normal. Her last relationship ended two years ago and she hasn't had time or energy to pursue anything since. And, okay, no one said this was the beginning of epic romance, or anything, but she has a good feeling.  
  
When Don kisses her outside her apartment after the show, she thinks, yeah. This could be really good.  
  
_____  
 _NOW_  
  
After, they go back to Amelia's house. She pulls out a bottle of tequila and a lime and waggles them.  
  
"I have guest bedrooms. I'm pretty sure you guys need a drink almost as much as I do."  
  
Shrugging, they accept.  
  
"Hey, I was thinking," says Amelia, a few shots in. "I kind of look like Mariana."  
  
"Yeah." Sam had noticed. "You kind of do."  
  
"Is that why he picked me? Like, was he trying to find her all this time?"  
  
"Probably." Sam stares into the glass in front of him. "They were engaged, and he died before they could get married. That's some pretty serious unfinished business, if you ask me."  
  
"Speaking of unfinished business," says Dean, who is as subtle as a baseball bat, "I'm gonna head to bed. Amelia, where am I going?"  
  
"Left at the top of the stairs, first or second door, your choice. I can't vouch for the sheets, though."  
  
Dean waves her off. "Please. I guarantee I've slept in worse."  
  
"Okay, then. Good night. And... thanks."  
  
Dean looks at her seriously for a moment. "Any time," he says finally. "Night."  
  
Once Dean is gone, it's almost awkward for a second, until Amelia starts to giggle.  
  
"I have to admit," she says, "I really disliked your brother on principle, because it hurt you when he died and then he took you away from me when he came back, but he's not so bad. And bearing in mind that I now like your brother, I feel compelled to tell you: he's a good guy, but he's really not subtle."  
  
"Oh, I know." Sam shakes his head with a helpless grin. "Trust me, I grew up with the guy."  
  
"Yeah." Amelia pauses. "Sam, I wanted to ask you: did you find any other similarities between the dead women? I mean, aside from the fact that we all look similar?"  
  
It's not the question Sam was expecting, so he's a little thrown.  
  
"Uh, not really," he says. "It's impossible to find out absolutely everything about people, though, so there might be commonalities that I just didn't see."  
  
"I think I might know one." Sam raises his eyebrows and waits. Amelia takes another shot and then breathes in deeply through her nose. "It's possible that, um, the women that most strongly reminded Daniel of Mariana were women who had experienced loss involving a child."  
  
Sam blinks. "Sorry. Are you saying- did I-?"  
  
Amelia shakes out a mirthless chuckle. "No, not that. It's not exactly parallel, but. I was going to have Don's baby, and I miscarried." She looks at him then, square in the eye, waiting for his response.  
  
"Oh my god." It's instinct that has him reaching for her hands, and it's only when she lets him take them that he realises what he's done. "I'm so sorry."  
  
"It was right before Don was killed, too." She's doing an incredible job of keeping her voice even. "So it's not really the same sequence of events at all, but it just occurred to me, you know? Maybe there was something in me he recognised." She swipes the base of her thumb along the beading tears at the edge of one eye. "And anyway," she continues, "I thought you should know. You know, since I know your big dark secret now." She smiles, a little unsteadily.  
  
Sam can't keep in a bark of laughter. "Oh, man, that is so far from my biggest and darkest secret, you don't even know."  
  
She rolls her eyes. "Either way. Now you know."  
  
He squeezes her hand. "Thank you for telling me," he says sincerely.  
  
She nods. They sit like that for several minutes, just quietly holding each other's hands on the table. Sam feels like, after leaving things stuck at an off-angle when he went back to Dean, things between them have settled into their right space. He'll probably always love her. That's okay. He still loves Jess, somewhere in his heart. Sam doesn't let go of things. But eventually, they stop hurting.  
  
In the morning, Amelia says, for Dean's benefit, "I don't do breakfast, you guys are gonna have to grab something on your way out of town."  
  
"I like her," Dean says to Sam. "She reminds me of me."  
  
Amelia laughs.  
  
When Dean's in the car, Sam lingers on Amelia's front step for a bit longer.  
  
"I don't think I can handle seeing you again any time soon," Amelia says bluntly. Sam nods. He's not sure he could handle it either.  
  
"Call me, though, if- if anything else weird comes up?" he asks, a little hesitant.  
  
She rolls her eyes. "Who else am I gonna call, Sam? You're the closest thing to the Ghostbusters that actually exists."  
  
They hug goodbye. It's a long hug, the kind of hug Sam doesn't get to just have anymore. He savours it, the way the smell of her hair mixes with the salt smell of the sea, the way she fits against him. It might not ever happen again, and he's kind of okay with that, but while it lasts, he's going to soak it in.  
  
When they finally pull apart, there might be tears in both their eyes. Nobody mentions anything, so it might not be true.  
  
"Take care of yourself, Sam," she says.  
  
"You, too," he says. "Goodbye, Amelia."  
  
"Goodbye, Sam."  
  
He gets into the car. Dean pulls out. Sam glances back once. Amelia is leaning in the doorway, just watching.  
  
They stop for breakfast burritos an hour down the highway. When they get back on the road, Dean turns up the music, one of the Zeppelin albums that Sam hates on principle but loves in this visceral way that he's never been able to put into words.  
  
The sky is clear and the road is smooth and his brother is alive.  
  
He's going to be fine.


End file.
